Slashdot Log In
AI Could Power Next-gen CCTV Cameras
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jun 25, 2008 09:13 PM
from the the-unseen-mechanized-eye dept.
from the the-unseen-mechanized-eye dept.
Barence writes "UK researchers are working on fitting CCTV cameras with artificial intelligence, allowing them to more quickly respond to crimes.
The technology, being developed by University of Portsmouth scientists, would allow cameras to "hear" violent sounds and react, swiveling quickly in the direction of a broken window or somebody shouting abusively for example, before alerting an operator.
The artificial intelligence powering the camera would also be able to respond to visual cues such as fights, or violent behaviour."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Ninjas (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ninjas (Score:5, Funny)
Yes but they would catch a lot of Pirates. Pirates are a noisy lot.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Ninjas (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone over there try to remember this if they try to implement it....
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if while the cameras are first deployed, if everyone does "Silly Walks" for weeks...it will really fsck up the AI on the cameras? I'd have to think that after a week or so of them trained that way....they'd have so many false positives on 'normal' people going about their way, they'd just chuck the whole thing in the trash can.
Someone over there try to remember this if they try to implement it....
Or they'd just arrest and jail everyone who does "silly walks" on charges of trying to interfere with law enforcement.
Re:Ninjas (Score:5, Informative)
Charges? This is being developed in the UK, we don't need any of your antiquated "charges" to lock somebody up.
Just shout terrorist, and the jobs done.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder if those cameras can tell the difference between a shout and a loud belch. If not, they'll be watching a lot of peaceful fat middle-aged oafs.
Like the Eye of Sauron? (Score:5, Funny)
Would that be swivelling around the like Eye of Sauron did when Frodo put on the ring on the rim of Mount Doom?
I'm just askin'
Yeah... that'll work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice idea- 'till someone gets his buddy to play a loud accordian solo ten feet away while he picks pockets out of frame.
(Sorry for the AC, I'm on a public terminal.)
So, the idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So, the idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:So, the idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Think about it. If you wanted to garrotte someone quietly, why the fuck would you toss a firecracker? At least it will give you an option of either putting the police on your trail, or having to come face-to-face with a camera.
Re:So, the idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. The technology they're suggesting is not that useful. Let's think of a better idea.
Suppose instead you use cameras with a full field of view, that don't need to swivel at all and always can record everything. Aside from recording a crime, can we do more?
If you still have these microphones, you could can use them to pinpoint where on a hi-res camera feed the noise came from. If you can identify the type of sound, you could use them in some sort of alert system which escalates warnings to a real person.
None of these fixes the quiet garotting scenario, since there's no sound. Instead, you have AI looking at physical cues and body language for suspicious behaviour. Even then, we're just talking about trying to get there in time to apprehend the culprit; nothing will save the victim.
Parent
Re:So, the idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Easier to follow the normal method: don't bother distracting the camera, commit the crime anyway in full view, give the finger to the camera operator, then walk off to remain unpunished forever. Of course if on the odd chance you are arrested by the single remaining policeman who isn't filling in paperwork or persecuting motorists, you won't get any time anyway as the prisons are full. Welcome to Britain.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have this strange insight that you read the Daily Mail.
Re:So, the idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Gimli: "How?"
Aragorn: "Draw out Sauron's armies, empty His lands. Then we gather our full strength and march on the Black Gate. We can give Frodo his chance if we keep Sauron's Eye fixed upon us!"
Legolas: "A diversion!"
WELL THANK YOU LEGOLAS CAPTAIN OBVIOUS
Parent
Easy to subvert. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy to subvert. (Score:4, Informative)
An interesting point. Any brief distractions (such as a firecracker or single broken pane of glass) would, in theory, fail, as the camera would just abandon them and turn toward the real crime the instant it noticed what was happening off-camera.
However, how would it handle a prolonged mock crime and a real crime that occur simultaneously...
Regardless, I point you to this gentleman's timely journal on the matter of surveillance:
"Official Voyeurism [slashdot.org]"
Parent
Re:Easy to subvert. (Score:5, Interesting)
The best security is unpredictable. For instance, the security the casinos use, or the scheduling the Army uses for patrols. They use random noise to generate the schedule. With this, you are installing predictable rules into the camera, which (like in the Matrix) can then be bent or broken.
You could add some unpredicability to the AI, but then you might miss something. The best thing is a nice preventative camera viewing cone covering every inch of the surface you intend to protect, preferably with multiple cameras.
This could be of use in other aspects, such as accident cams and such. I think there was something like this in demolition man (Brave New World) wherein the nearest camera to a detected incident swiveled and zoomed. Everything of course was recorded. Crime of course was completely gone, bred out of society. Well, until an unconventional enemy showed up.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be much smarter just not to commit crimes near cameras? Either:
1. Your diversion isn't very good and the camera will continue scanning elsewhere when it realizes this, seeing the crime
2. Your diversion is good, and calls the cops, who will trivially catch you
I fail to see how committing crimes near cameras make sense. What I would do (which is what plenty of people currently do) if I wanted to commit a crime near a camera is destroy the camera first.
See http://aia.mahost.org/act_cctv.html [mahost.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why? It's not like any of us will ever go aboveground to take advantage of this shortcoming.
Violence Detection Unit? (Score:5, Funny)
a better idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:a better idea (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Those folks at CSI also have amazing internet trace softare. Even from octets in the 300s [thedailywtf.com]! Click "expand text" and scroll down a tick.)
If they can hunt you down from that, no telling what they could do with actual AI-controlled footage of you comitting a crime.
correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
Does not need to swivel but sound is useful (Score:2, Interesting)
I am not exactly sure this would be useful for the swiveling aspect of things as mentioned by other posters. However using sound could be an interesting augmentation to vision if done using the right filters. Swiveling would not be a big issue if using a wide angle lens like a fish-eye lens.
I feel better now (Score:4, Insightful)
Knowing that they will use "AI" to aim their cameras instead of just pointing them to a wide view, makes me feel good. The government and its fascist corporate accessories may be evil, but at least they are also incompetent.
Balloons with angry faces will distract the cameras while you walk down the street unobserved.
Speakers, too (Score:2)
In further news, researchers are investigating adding speakers and speech synthesis to the system:
"Where did you go?" "There you are!" "Could you come over here please?"
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
An interesting point of law: (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll be interested to see how the law treats a system that is a form of audio surveillance; but is not an audio recording device. Is it legal if the AI responds to sound but won't tell you what it responded to? Can the AI classify sounds into a variety of categories and report those? Is a verbatim speech-to-text record ok, as long as the audio is not recorded? Depending on how this one shakes down, it could end up being, in effect, an elimination of restrictions on audio surveillance.
This is getting old. (Score:3, Interesting)
Every schmuck who wants to get in the news slaps "Artificial Intelligence" on their contraption and suddenly the world stops to take notice.
Unless this system:
1. employs (or provides) some sort of multitiered malleable logic established by prior experiences that can identify a scenario based on inputs,
2. identifies the best case response to the identified scenario, using not only stored experiences (preprogrammed memory), but relevant characteristics of the scenario itself.
3. implements that best case scenario, checking constantly (or at least regularly) that the implemented actions are yielding results along the desired/expected solution path.
4. identifying the resolution phase of its response, so it can consider the scenario resolved and cease its response process. ...then there's no intelligence to it. What these fellows have sounds more like an advanced sound analysis engine that autonomously controls a camera swivel.
Good for them. Yay. Fun. Hurrah.
But, where's the AI again? Next...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Interesting, tell me more about the Turing test.
Whoops mis-read the title (Score:2, Funny)
My first thought was...Is there anything Al Gore can't do, after all he did invent the internet
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
More Tires? (Score:2, Interesting)
And how many more tires full of petrol are Brits going to put on these things every week?
They seem to be burning them up pretty regularly over there.
It's truly amazing... (Score:5, Interesting)
...what you can accomplish against a population under constant surveillance and no human rights left at all. Consider:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/16/1730221
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/20/2318220
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/27/1457253
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/20/1344200
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/10/1846241
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/04/1750246
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23412867-details/Tens+of+thousands+of+CCTV+cameras%2C+yet+80%25+of+crime+unsolved/article.do
and, my personal favorite:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6524495.stm
Oh, I'm sure the UK government has the very best of intentions. We all know what is paved with those. And the UK has already arrived.
Re: (Score:2)
The New Turing Test (Score:2)
AI on cameras? (Score:2)
As far as there wasn't even an homogenous definition of what is AI (http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/23/1539245)
Now they say they will stick it on cameras? Is this just a marketing trick? or a way to explain l-users that the camera has some sort of "image recognition"?
Wow! Thought-powered cameras!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
AI Could "power" Nex-gen CCTV Cameras?
POWER?!?!
Control? Yes. Power? No.
oblig futurama excerpt (Score:3, Funny)
Camera: Well, let's see. My memory's a little fuzzy, but it went exactly like this:
It projects a picture of Fry and Bender taking the money from Roberto
Hyper-Chicken: Your Honour, I move that I be disbarred for introducing this evidence against my own clients.
"DRIVE", not "POWER" (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeez. We're supposed to be techies here, not a clueless advertising department.
There are proper terms for this:
- If the AI provides energy to make the circuitry of the camera run, it's POWERing it.
- If the AI provides processing to control the camera's operation and/or reducing the data it produces, it's DRIVing it.
So unless this camera has a REALLY SMART power supply the headline is flat-out bogus.
Careful with those CAPS (Score:4, Funny)
Subject shouting abusively, recommend immediate ASBO and follow up with sustained surveillance for two months.
Parent
Colossus (Score:4, Informative)
-- Colossus, The Forbin Project
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".
HAL 9000 -- 2001 - A Space Oddessy
And the test-case could be... (Score:3, Insightful)
if(hot_chick()) {
zoom_follow();
}
Security mindset... (Score:4, Insightful)
1- Your pal "accidentally" makes a loud noise
2- Cameras all turn towards him
3- rob bank
4- Profit
You're hired! (Score:3, Interesting)
What happens instead of AI-CCTV, they actually hire police with REAL intelligence? Or is the notion of police officer with intelligence clearly nuts?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What happens instead of AI-CCTV, they actually hire police with REAL intelligence? Or is the notion of police officer with intelligence clearly nuts?
It seems to me that the HAL-9000 wouldn't have had any of the problems that have been suggested here.
And Deep Thought would have pointed out all 42 of the criminals before they even decided to do the deed.